Justice officials in "Panic Mode" over failed Gun Program

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Deanimator said:
I'm sure that it's perfectly reasonable to dismiss all law enforcement corruption as a "conspiracy theory".
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So why did you claim that there is a federal conspiracy that goes ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP and use local cases blamed only on the PD as examples?
Or did you intend to walk right into azmjs's point about the paranoiacs and the conspiracy theorists?
 
the Ruby Ridge was a conspiracy to use a person "Randy Weaver" to commit a criminal act and sell an Illegal sawed off shot gun to someone the ATF wanted to burn.....it only takes three people to be a conspiracy, and what about Waco....Janet Reno, and the decision to change the rules of engagement ?.....Clinton was aware of Reno's actions, those people were inside a buliding not going anyplace, and David Koresh told the ATF he would meet with them, not on the grounds but in Waco.....and what was the big rush to take control of the building ?, why announce yourself with concusion grenades?,after jumping out of a Horse Trailer ? rather than a Knock on the door ?, where were the Illegal Machine Guns they found? , and why did the Government make up stories about Child abuse ?....to gether support for Burning those people to death.....why did so many agents lie to the court ?, in both cases ?.....now tell me again theres no conspiratorial actions by our government.....i'm listening
 
Anyone who knows ANYTHING about obama, knows He wanted this done, he is Anti Gun, so is Eric Holder and lets not forget the new head of the ATF, Andrew Traver....these people clearly have an agenda, question is, are we stupid enough to let them get away with it ?....lets hope not.


you figure Eric and obama never discussed this plan?.....it must be tough being so naive, this was to get more Anti Gun sentiments going, and introduce more knee jerk legislation to make it harder and harder to buy guns.
 
The main indication I have seen that this goes to the top of our government was that Ken Melson said he was doing his bosses' bidding. Take a look at the DOJ organizational chart. He has three bosses: the DAG, AG, and POTUS.

Also, I find it suspicious that Eric Holder testified to Congress in May that he learned of this scandal "a few weeks" earlier. Senator Grassley sent him a letter on January 31st that certainly should have gotten his attention and spurred his curiosity. My conclusion is that he either:

1. Does not open his mail from US Senators, or

2. Is incredibly incompetent and failed to recognize a major problem in his department, or

3. Lied to Congress under oath.

Any of the three mean he needs to go.

org-chart_Large-red.jpg
 
So why did you claim that there is a federal conspiracy that goes ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP and use local cases blamed only on the PD as examples?
Or did you intend to walk right into azmjs's point about the paranoiacs and the conspiracy theorists?
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It's called an "analogy". Really, look it up.

REAL conspiracies happen. Google "Watergate".

Azmjs has NO "point", beyond the BATFE ALWAYS being blameless and pure as the driven slime, and the current administration with them.
 
Do you think Fox News would let any documented suggestion of a false flag operation intended to undermine the 2nd Amendment slide right on by?
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I do think they would. "Their team" got away with many crimes, and still does, and if they get in the habit of burning others, they open "their team" to getting burned for the many crimes they committed. Maybe it's more like a version of the thin blue line. The thin .gov line. I also believe they would do it, because in my opinion, that is exactly what we are witnessing right now. Even if I can only guess why, it's happening , the way I see it.
There is also the (false imo) belief that government on the whole is actually attempting to serve the people, and disbelief that they could be consciously working against them instead. This leads a certain type to just shrug it off and move on. "Those crazy/stupid/backward politicians are at it again. Is Dancing with the Stars on?"
 
Do you think Fox News would let any documented suggestion of a false flag operation intended to undermine the 2nd Amendment slide right on by?
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I was watching a fox news panel reviewing what they knew of the investigation and it was clear they did not understand the problem or it's implications.
 
I should think my point has been pretty clear... I haven't stated it plainly in unambiguous language. I'd like to hear you explain yourself for making this comment: "the BATFE ALWAYS being blameless and pure as the driven slime, and the current administration with them."

I've heard the line about Watergate, or something to the same effect, when people try to rationalize their paranoia about the moon landing or 9/11. I didn't find it convincing then and I don't find it convincing now. The "false flag" theory is particularly popular with 9/11 conspiracy folks. The whole notion of "false flag operation" is pretty much a mainstay of conspiracy paranoia in general, now that I think about it.
 
Today is the deadline for DOJ to release information that Congress has requested on 12 people who are known to have knowledge of the gunwalking.

July 11, 2011

The Honorable Eric Holder
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avennue, NW
Washington DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Holder:

As our investigation in Operation Fast and Furious has progressed, we have learned that senior officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ), including Senate-confirmed political appointees, were unquestionably aware of the implementation of this reckless program. Therefore it is necessary to review communications between and among these senior officials. As such, please provide all records relating to communications between and among the following individuals regarding Operation Fast and Furious:

1. David Ogden, Former Deputy Attorney General;

2. Gary Grindler, Officer of the Attorney General and former Acting Deputy Attorney General;

3. James Cole, Deputy Attorney General;

4. Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General;

5. Kenneth Blanco, Deputy Assistant Attorney General;

6. Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General;

7. John Keeney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General;

8. Matt Axelrod, Associate Deputy Attorney General;

9. Ed Siskel, Former Associate Deputy Attorney General;

10. Brad Smith, Office of the Deputy Attorney General;

11. Kevin Carwhile, Section Chief, Capitol Case Unit; and

12. Joseph Cooley, Criminal Fraud Section.

These records should include e-mails, memoranda, briefing papers, and handwritten notes. Additionally, any records related to communications referring to a large firearms trafficking case within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) or in Phoenix should be included in any production.

Please provide this information no later than July 18, 2011, at noon. If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact Tristan Leavitt in Ranking Member Grassley's office at (202) 224-5225 or Henry Kerner of Chairman Issa's Committee staff at (202) 225-5074. I look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

Darrell Issa, Chairman, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Charles Grassley, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on the Judiciary

cc: The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
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I expect this deadline will pass without cooperation from the DOJ like the others have, and we'll once again move on to subpoenas, blocked nominations, and threats of contempt of Congress to try to get some glimmer of transparency from this administration.
 
Just an IMO...

...and I'm not a whackjob who sees a "Gub'mint Conspiracy" in every memo.

But...

When I first heard about Fast & Furious, the first thing that popped into my mind was:

"Uh huh! I see. Make sure that American guns are turning up in Mexican crimes in order to lend support to the claims that 90% of all Mexican crime is being committed with American guns that come directly from shady American gun dealers so the general public will support more infringements."

It doesn't really take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

I've got a dollar to bet against a dime that there are more than a few red eyes and overheated shredders in DC this morning.
 
AT first Operation Fast & Furious (aka "Gunwalker") appeared to be a hairbrained offshoot of Project Gunrunner, and F&F appeared isolated to one ATF field office in Phoenix AZ.

Now it seems that the Tampa FL ATF office was involved in a similar scheme in Honduras, allowing guns into the hands of suspected traffickers.

Also a Houston TX FFL dealer, Carter's Country, say the local ATF told them to let suspected straw buyers walk with guns. That one broke in Dec 2010 but had been brewing for sometime. Mentioned in Washington Post's "The Hidden Life of Guns" series:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/13/AR2010121305395.html
James V. Grimaldi and Sari Horwitz , "Carter's Country, a Houston area gun seller, under investigation by federal grand jury", Washington Post, December 13, 2010.
A federal grand jury in Houston is investigating a clerk for one of the largest independent gun retailers in Texas for allegedly making illegal sales of firearms that landed in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.....

(criminal defense attorney Dick) DeGuerin said Carter's Country and the salesman did nothing wrong and were acting as tipsters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in developing cases against suspected gun traffickers.

"They (Carter's) tipped them (ATF) off to dozens of purchases," DeGuerin said. "What's outrageous is that there could be this kind of suspicion that Carter's Country or anyone at Carter's Country did anything unlawful, when they were just doing what ATF wanted them to do. ... They were encouraged to go through with the sales so that the ATF could follow the sales...."
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The figure of 2500 "Gunwalker" guns I believe was just the Phoenix operation. Not counting Tampa or Houston.

ASIDE: The closest I have found to the FDR quote
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.
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is:
FDR speech at The Citadel (23 October 1935):
Yes. we are on the way back - not by mere chance, not by a turn of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we planned it that way, and don't let anybody tell you differently.
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That appears to be like the Admiral Yamamoto quote after Pearl Harbor, rendered in the movies as:
I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
Click to expand...
when the original was:
Yamamoto in early 1942:
"A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."
Click to expand...
 
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I am not going to enter the discussion on the shredders running or not.

But, consider this. Today almost all data is electronic. Government IT departments have done a very good job of making it difficult to "cleanse" the electronic files of specific topics.

My Opinion:

Most if not all street officers and SAC from all federal LE agencies are just trying to do their job. (Or other GS personnel across the fed gvmt)

HQ personnel (top to bottom) in DC tend to become political regardless of agency.

What happened here? Who knows. But the more information that comes out, and the questions that remain unanswered, tend to indicate that the stated objective here is not the reality.

Incompetence in a single location is becoming less and less plausible as a excuse. What if offices other than Phoenix are found to be involved in similar operations? i.e. Tampa, Houston, Dallas..... There is at least some evidence to indicate that this may be the case.

As a last thought, Stupidity is not a defense in a courtroom. Think about that for a while and your brain may explode.
 
Incompetence in a single location is becoming less and less plausible as a excuse. What if offices other than Phoenix are found to be involved in similar operations? i.e. Tampa, Houston, Dallas..... There is at least some evidence to indicate that this may be the case.
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To see some here defending the BATFE and Holder, it's like watching somebody trying to characterize Pearl Harbor as a TOTALLY unrelated series of attacks for ENTIRELY unrelated reasons, with no overarching plan or purpose, mostly over gambling debts and failed relationships, as well as a few pilots who got lost and thought they were over a Japanese bombing range.

They think they're insulting other people, but are instead mocking themselves and their own sycophantic worship of the BATFE and this administration. The fact that people have DIED because of this conspiracy is of UTTERLY no import to them.
 
One last thing. Strong feelings abound here. I understand that.

But, if you believe in our system, we have to let the system work. Pressure must be kept on the politicians to encourage them to chase the rabbit down the hole. Hopefully, the politicians will push the system to disclose the truth.

I give us a 10% probability that a substantial amount of the facts are disclosed and a 2% chance people are charged with felony crimes.

Like it our not, this is our system and has been our system since the rise of the Progressive about 90 years ago.
 
TBH I think it may have been a legit intelligence gathering operation but a very stupid, ends justify the means type of thing that definitely crossed moral and ethical lines.
 
Pressure must be kept on the politicians to encourage them to chase the rabbit down the hole.
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The system won't work on its own.

Look at investigations of two past ATF-involved scandals: the Ruby Ridge stand-off (21-31 Aug 1992) and the Waco Siege (28 Feb-19 Apr 1993).

Because the Clinton Administration saw Ruby Ridge as the GHW Bush Administration's ugly stepchild, the Senate hearings on Ruby Ridge were actually fairly balanced and the results respected by a wide range of observors. Democrats and Republicans on the panel worked to identify problems and propose fixes.

Because the Clinton Administration saw Waco as their baby, the House hearings on Waco were awash with whitewash and the results were hardly constructive. It was basically Democrats versus Republicans.

Especially if you read the FBI report on Project Megiddo ( http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps3578/www.fbi.gov/library/megiddo/megiddo.pdf ) and choose to see Ruby Ridge and Waco as part of a two-decade government plan to deal with Millennial "cults" as Y2K approached.

There appear to be systemic problems with the entrenched bureaucracy or the culture of the bureau that goes back decades or whole generations.
 
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But, consider this. Today almost all data is electronic. Government IT departments have done a very good job of making it difficult to "cleanse" the electronic files of specific topics.
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You bring up a good point. I've worked as a FedGov in IT as a developer and DBA for two decades. In all that time I can't think of a single network admin, systems admin, or database admin who would obey an order to destroy data, especially if there were a Congressional subpoena for it. More likely they'd archive it, remove it from the "production" servers, and anonymously ship a DVD off to Grassley/Issa themselves.
 
No doubt, In the end, it all comes down to politics. One big difference between then and now is gun ownership. In 1992 I had only seen a AR-15 in a gun store. Never held one, didn't know anyone who owned one. My son is now 22. All of his friends who have shot a centerfire rifle have shot a AR-15. I don't know that the AR hasn't become the Ruger 10/22 of this generation. Gun ownership today is much more widespread and the stigma that was attached to owning "assault weapons" is for the most part gone. Again, most first time handgun buyers are buying semi auto high cap pistols.

Although the question "why does someone need _____ gun" may be made today it is ignored except with the gun control fanatics. IMO Gun ownership has gone mainstream.

So, with gun ownership in the mainstream, when politicians like BO, Cummings, et al begin to spout their restrictive policies they don't resound with the public like they used to.

Where does this all matter? Well I think the gun control crowd overplayed their hand here. They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. If it was 1992 it might be different. For this reason, we must let the system work. We don't have much choice but to allow the politicians to run this to ground.

If we don't let the system work, what are the alternatives?
 
We the citizens (and tax payers and voters) must be part of the system in order for it to work. We cannot survive as spectators or by walking away trusting the "system" work without our paying attention.

Yes, it is a different world than 1992. Between 1986 and 1996, twenty-two states went "shall issue" on carry permits, every time the gun control crowd warning "more guns = more blood in the gutters" and every time the dire predictions failed. The assault weapon ban was tried 1994-2004 and allowed to sunset. CDC 2003 and NAS 2004 in reviews of academic studies found no evidence that gun restrictions affected crime. Gun ownership has actually been more mainstreamed, and anti-gun rhetoric has carried gun control advocates to the fringes.

As it comes out that the dealers were the ones questioning the motives of the straw buyers, and it was the ATF telling the dealers to let the questionable sales walk, it's a whole new view out there on responsibility.
 
Carl N. Brown,
verily, after reading your post and digging for an hour or three, I stand humbly corrected. Mea Culpa.
ASIDE: The closest I have found to the FDR quote

Quote:
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.

is:

Quote:
FDR speech at The Citadel (23 October 1935):
Yes. we are on the way back - not by mere chance, not by a turn of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we planned it that way, and don't let anybody tell you differently.

That appears to be like the Admiral Yamamoto quote after Pearl Harbor, rendered in the movies as:

Quote:
I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.

when the original was:

Quote:
Yamamoto in early 1942:
"A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."
Click to expand...
Must watch what I post from now on and dig deeper before "quoting" non-quotes. Thanks for the aside and heads up.
 
If any one has noticed,the Presidents new executive orders on gun safety,try to once again put the blame on the private gun owners,and the local g shops along the borders. He is counting once again on Americans having short memories. We can't let that happen.
 
It is disingenuous to act as though anyone here claims that it is impossible for there to be a conspiracy here. The argument is also equally fruitless in the claim that anyone denies the existence of conspiracies. Those claims are trying to reach a goalpost which is fundamentally divorced from anything considered a useful argument.

There are people here who jumped to conclusions that this is a conspiracy spanning from the regional federal agents to the highest office in the nation. There are also those with an incomplete world view in which all who do not believe in the same thing are automatically shills of The Other. Anyone who doesn't know the "Obama is behind it all" secret handshake is singled out for being "anti gun, the government is always right".

Where it goes from the rational to the irrational is when Innocent Until Proven Guilty becomes Guilty Until Proven Innocent If I Don't Like You.
 
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